2020-04-24 SPLAT Curiosity Report: COVID-19 Special Issue

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Editor’s Note: SPLAT members worked quickly to bring you this special issue of The Curiosity Report with reflections and resources on the current COVID-19 crisis. We all hope you enjoy this special issue and that you are staying safe and well.

Things to Think About

During this COVID-19 pandemic my library team has been staying connected via Slack. This resource has allowed us to both share resources and maintain our library community. I just wanted to take this opportunity to share a blog entry that our director shared with us via Slack. The entry comes from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ (IFLA) library policy and advocacy blog and is entitled “Now and Next: What a Post-COVID World May Bring for Libraries”. It really made me stop and think about what the long term effects of this pandemic will have on our libraries.

– Jackie Wood, Marshall Public Library

The Societal Butterfly

Staying at home and away from people is an introvert’s dream… erm…well… life.

When the Idaho governor told us to stay at home, it was no big deal for me. I don’t go anywhere for fun.. My away from home activities usually include kayaking and hiking, which tend to be a semi-solitary activity. When I was given online training to complete, I was thrilled. I could work without interruption on all the webinars and videos. No phones ringing or patrons asking questions. It seemed too good to be true.

It wasn’t until I realized that depression was seeping in that I was actually craving human connection outside my home environment. I started to miss my friends dearly. Wishing that we could all get together and have a BBQ. Zoom meetings and text messages only helped so much before I missed exchanging hugs and having cozy intimate chats. I even started to miss people that I don’t generally “hang out” with.

I began to enjoy, even look forward to, the emails that our library staff was participating in, reading what others were doing, and relating to them on some sort of personal level. My co-workers weren’t just co-workers anymore. They became my source of connection to the outside world. Even with the distance between us all, we were all in this together, working together as a team.

Was I secretly becoming an extrovert?! 0_0

No, I just realized that it is in human nature to seek out connection to others.

I started to realize that people all over the world are coming together to get through this crazy trying time. Communities are sewing masks as quickly as they can to share with others, 3D printing relief bands for healthcare workers (which, let me say are some of the biggest heroes in all of this), and general help for others. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such cooperation before. It warmed my heart to see people helping others, it made me want to help even more, and that felt good too. I got my sewing equipment out of storage and hunkered down with the few pieces of fabric that I had to make masks. It felt good to help people that I didn’t know. It felt nice to be able to do something for the community. I went into my home as shy and introverted and emerged as a different being, one that wanted to help others through this crisis.

I realized that in the recent past, society as a whole has become quite disconnected and emotionally stuck. It doesn’t feel good to be in that place and it becomes a vicious cycle perpetuating the disconnection. Staying at home for several weeks has offered us, as a society as well as individuals, a time of reflection and contemplation of what we can do in the future. I believe that this experience is something that will bring us all together.

So, when this is all said and done, I would like to leave you all with a quote from our library director that sums up everything nicely.

“I like to think of this time more like the life cycle of a butterfly. We could be in the chrysalis form now, but I am certain we will emerge soon into something else – maybe into a more understanding or forgiving less judgmental society.” – Ann Nichols

Stay safe and healthy everyone! We can marvel at our beautiful butterfly wings when we emerge from our cocoons.

– Vanessa Thiele, East Bonner County Library District

Attention Library Superheroes

I recently attended a Library 2.0 Webinar Titled “Being a SuperHero can Burn you Out.”

It was a couple of weeks ago but the information is still relevant and helpful.

  1. Don’t do it all at once
    1. We don’t know the time frame: especially with your state and your library
    2. Plan but plan that this may not get off the ground
    3. Don’t make it personal: don’t compare yourself to others or other libraries.
    4. Give yourself some space: allow for time for yourself. Especially if you have a busy house with home educating or multiple work partners under the same roof.
  2. Look into self care
  3. Make a daily routine
  4. Do things that make you happy
  5. Connect every day with a virtual HUMAN
  6. Meditate
  7. Get outside while practicing distancing
  8. Take photos: you will want to go back and remember this later
  9. Set Goals

– Rasheil Stanger, Valley of the Tetons Library

Geocaching: a social distancing game making a comeback

What is geocaching?

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world.

A few years ago geocaching was an up and coming fad to engage a world wide audience in the ultimate treasure hunt. Our family was hooked! Everytime we left the house we looked for a cache to find. We taught our kids to geocache, and it led to an unexpected and rewarding outdoor learning experience. Exploring nature was a goal that had a fantastic way to get outdoors and yet connect with other people in our community.

Guess what? It’s coming back! The best way to promote social distancing and still providing people a way to interact outdoors.

How to get started: https://www.geocaching.com/play

– Rasheil Stanger, Valley of the Tetons Library

Telework Innovations at the University of Idaho

Even though so much library work revolves around technology, it is a challenge to change from working all together in a building to working remotely. The University of Idaho Library has been working hard to expand our online services, prepare for the future (someday we’ll be back on campus!), and find productive work for our student employees in the wake of COVID-19 and campus closures.

Our Data and Digital Services (DDS) department is working on updating and curating internet archives like Perma, which creates archival links to prevent link rot (which is when a page moves, is deleted, or a site goes away thus link no longer connects to the desired content) and content drift (the content on a page changes over time, so it no longer relates or supports the original citation). The UI Library is focusing on capturing all the rapidly changing information shared over the internet about COVID-19 so it can be preserved.

To keep students employed, Data and Digital Services (DDS) has also put our circulation student employees to work improving metadata for our Argonaut Digital Collection. The Argonaut collection includes more than 6,000 issues of UI’s student newspaper ranging from 1898 until now. Digitized newspapers are hard to provide access to because of the sheer scale of the number of items and topics each issue covers. It takes a huge amount of detailed work to provide human made index metadata–but since we have students and others no longer working with the public, this is a big moment of opportunity! Since we have to train and manage the contributors to the project remotely, DDS set up a detailed website outlining the entire workflow to ensure they are clear about the process and have ready reference material. Creating metadata is done in Google Sheets, with a separate Google Drive folder for each contributor to keep the process organized.

Our First Year Experience Team has put students to work improving the materials they use to teach undergraduate students library and research skills when they arrive at UI. Other librarians have put students to work creating digital book displays, improving the library’s research guides, and helping out with our social media presence. We’ve also lent out the 3D printer from our makerspace to another department on campus that is making personal protective equipment (PPE) for local hospitals. To work together on all these projects and stay in touch with each other, the whole library is utilizing Zoom and now learning Microsoft Teams.

All of these projects make the library more user-friendly and effective, while also sharpening the collaboration and technology skills of our faculty and staff. While no one can say that all this isolation is very fun, we’re making the most of it and working to make our services and resources better than ever!

– Jessica Martinez, University of Idaho Library

Pandemic Link Round Up

I had the best intentions of writing a nice, beautiful, inspiring article about how being immersed in Design Thinking for the past few years helped me quickly adapt to the many challenges presented by working from home, complete with diagrams of my design cycles and “How might we” questions. However, in this new normal time has no meaning and somehow there’s less of it, so instead, I present a round up of my favorite pandemic-related links:

– Alex Johnatakis, Caldwell Public Library

What to do with the time!

With school being out, parents and caregivers have an opportunity to teach children skills that every person should learn. We call these Adulting Skills. I am talking about fixing a running toilet, making a budget, sharpening a knife, sorting laundry, baking from a recipe, washing dishes without a dishwasher, solving weed problems, planting a vegetable, washing windows, jump starting a car, sewing on a button. This is part of kid’s education and we could use this time at home to teach these skills, practice them, or relearn them. Use this time to teach self-reliance during this time at home.

There are so many digital resources for parents to help teach life skills. Reaching out to your family members for help on skill building can be a great way to connect with older relatives. I know many people go to Youtube looking for “How To video”, but your library is a great resource also. Idaho Libraries have databases. Look for The ChiltonLibrary database (maintenance on cars) and Creativebug (craft and sewing ideas).

Here is a link to a post that captures a positive spin on staying home.

Take this time to teach skills that will be valuable for the rest of your children’s lives.

– Eric Hovey, Ada Community Libraries

SPLAT explores the ever-evolving library world and supports library folks as they adapt to meet the needs of their communities. Library folk throughout the state of Idaho volunteer to serve on the Special Projects Library Action Team (SPLAT). Learn more about SPLAT at splat.lili.org

SPLAT is brought to you by the Idaho Commission for Libraries and was made possible, in part, by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (LS-00-19-0013-19). The views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.